


In Astonishment and Wonder

by TiamatsChild



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hainish Cycle - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Community: theavatar100, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-28 07:45:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiamatsChild/pseuds/TiamatsChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An envoy of the Ekumen comes to the four nations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Astonishment and Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> "How can you tell the legend from the fact on these worlds that lie so many years away? – planets without names, called by their people simply The World..."

On the fifth night out from the capital Pooja was shaken gently awake by the steamer’s captain. His square, solid hand folded over her shoulder so that, for a muddled moment, she thought she was again a child in India, and her father had come to wake her. 

“Professor,” the captain said, low. “Come. There is something you should see.”

So she stood, clumsy with the softness of the great boiler’s heat and the edges of sleep, and followed the captain as if she were a newborn calf. (Which indeed she was, so far from Earth.) 

“There,” the captain said, when he had handed her up the swaying steps and steadied her across the deck. “That was the Airbenders’, once.”

She looked, and saw off the starboard side an island that slid upwards toward the stars, slick and elegant and sharp. The moon lit its mountains, made them glow white and gray against the sea’s dark glimmer. A cold sea wind blew to her, and she shivered, her bare toes curling against the deck, her breath short.

“Are they all gone, sir?” she asked, small as a child.

“All, professor,” the captain said, and her heart broke at his loss.


End file.
